A hotel employee whose identification tag said he was Kresimir Skoko got on an elevator, dragging an enormous vacuum cleaner. At the next floor, a moist young woman fresh out of Lake Michigan got on with two youthful sports who struggled to settle their bicycles around Skoko's machine. The athletes had the look of the superfit, the whites of their eyes blue white, calves plumped out like loving cups, dazzling teeth set in gums that probably will never know the heartbreak of gingivitis. Skoko had the look of a man grown weary with this age, and the knit of his brow suggested an approaching squall line.
"You been in?" the wet woman was asked.
"Yeah."
The elevator door opened at the sixth floor and the two with bikes wrestled to get them over the vacuum cleaner and into the corridor.
"What's the temp?"
The door tried to close but was defeated.
"I've heard different ones, 58 to 65."
"What did it feel like?"
"Sixty-three."
"Enough!" Skoko cried. "O.K.? Too much!" The door closed. The swimmer looked at Skoko and said, "Sheesh!" Skoko looked at the ceiling.
Grouch, you say? Old crank? On the contrary, sympathy is due the vacuum- cleaner man. The world, and especially this country, has become a hard place for those not yet committed to the overhaul of the flesh, heart and lungs--and none of these were in a rougher spot last week than Skoko.
His employer, the Hotel Continental, was the headquarters for the third annual Chicago Bud Light U.S. Triathlon Series, which attracted 2,400 professional and amateur athletes, the largest gathering a triathlon has pulled in so far. There was not enough excess body fat among the participants to fill a shot glass. One could not traipse a hall anywhere without hearing the tick-tick-tick of a ten-speed coming down hard on the heels. To the uninitiated, a crowd like this can be intimidating. And to an observer not possessed of a similar obsession, ceaseless talk of training techniques, water temperatures and times tends to get a little tedious.
That was for you, Skoko--and all of us like you. Now to business:
It all began when a bunch of jocks in Hawaii fell to arguing about which was the tougher sport, biking, running or swimming. Out of the quarrel was born the first Ironman Triathlon: 15 seemingly crackbrained humans on a 2.4-mile ocean swim followed by a 112-mile bike race followed by a 26.2-mile marathon run. That was in 1978. This year, with the distances in many cases shortened to a so-called tinman's grasp, 1.2 million Americans are expected to take part in 2,100 triathlons. The event is being called the fastest-growing participatory sport in the nation. There is talk of getting it on the Olympics agenda by 1992. It is as ubiquitous as Moonies at an airport.
The people who participate are dead serious and well off. According to Triathlon magazine, their average age is 34, they graduated from college, they earn $45,000 a year and 40% of them carry an American Express card of one color or another. Says Beth Schneider-Needel, one of the organizers of the Chicago race: "It's just a natural extension of the aggression they take to their careers. Because they work, they have to train in the mornings, at lunch and at night. It's hell on your social life, and you don't get much sleep."